Seems that I'm not blogging much on my vacation blog... BUT am mixing in photo stories along with vacation stories... so this blog will be about my photo addiction and I'll keep the vacation blog for blogging about vacations... DUH...

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Christmas baking... a family tradition!

I've been making two of the four cookies pictured here (slightly smaller than actual size) at Christmas time (missing a few years here and there for some reason or another) for over 50 years and others of my family also make these annually. The recipes date back to when my mother discovered some recipe suggestions for Christmas baking, tucked into a bag of Gold Medal flour. She thought a couple of the recipes sounded like fun and would be delicious so we set out to make them.

My mother suffered from eczema and could not do the "hand mixing" that was required of both recipes (in the time before food processors came along). From the time I can remember, I was Mom's kitchen helper, doing most of the chores requiring "hands on" when she could not do those chores. So until my siblings were older and could help, Christmas baking fell to me with Mom assisting with chores that didn't require her to touch the ingredients.

Pictured above are Cherry Coconut Bars, Cream Wafers, Chocolate Truffles, Spiced Pecans and Russian Tea Cakes (or Mexican Wedding Cakes). The Cherry Coconut Bars and Cream Wafers are the two "family" recipes that I've been making off and on ever since I was a young girl... and once I discovered that the "hand mixing" could be done better and more efficiently using a food processor, I've been making them almost every year since. The other items are more recent additions with the Russian Tea Cakes being made for the first time this year.

Recipes for the Cherry Coconut Bars, Cream Wafers, Chocolate Truffles, Spiced Pecans and some other holiday treats not pictured here may be found on my other blog starting with Holiday Baking - Part 1 and I share ALL my secrets for simplifying the recipes.

3 comments:

They do look very yummy (and I love the plate they are on). I use to work on a unit in the hospital where we treated people with severe eczema. It can be such a debilating disorder. Your mom was blessed to have you as a helper and I am sure you learned a lot about cooking and baking.

You are something else, Victoria! I declare. I have the time, technically, to make such delicacies but I can never in 100 years imagine myself doing them. I could make them, of course, but have long ago left such motivation to others, like you...while I sit and marvel! Too bad I can't also test one of each, just to make sure you really are following the recipe correctly! :) Congratulations is all I can say.

News items...

If you enjoy squirrel antics, you might like to view my Squirrel Proof - take 2collection of images. Changing the speed for 1 second display of each image makes it almost look like a movie as the silly squirrels tackle first one, then another, then the third (and newest) squirrel proof feeder hanging off my deck.